The head of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom and the country’s former premier Sergei Kiriyenko is set to join the groundbreaking ceremony of Bangladesh’s first ever nuclear power plant at Rooppur on October 2.
General Director of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom Sergei Kiriyenko is heading a high ranking Russian delegation,” a Russian embassy spokesman told BSS.
He said this would be the first ever visit of such a high-profile dignitary from Moscow to Bangladesh in decades while the former Russian premier would also join several other programmes other than the foundation laying ceremony at the project site at Rooppur at northwestern Pabna.
Kiriyenko a prominent Russian statesman and politician who served as the country’s prime minister in 1998 under President Boris Yeltsin and since 2005 he has been serving Russia’s federal nuclear agency Rosatom.
Officials said the high profile Russian leader would join Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in laying the foundation stone of the power plant on October 2.
The groundbreaking ceremony is being held two years after Dhaka signed a crucial framework agreement with Moscow on Russian cooperation for the country’s maiden nuclear plant by 2017-18 at a cost of $1.5bn to $2bn.
Bangladesh signed an initial deal with Russian state-owned nuclear agency Rosatom in November 2011 to build a nuclear plant with two 1,000 megawatt reactors at a cost of up to $2bn each in view of its present reserves of natural gas. During
Sheikh Hasina’s Moscow visit in January this year, the two countries signed an agreement under which Russia is to provide a separate $500m loan to Bangladesh to help build the plant.
